


Ravens and Wolves

by Immanuel



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9333746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immanuel/pseuds/Immanuel
Summary: Corax and Russ leave their legions behind and make their way to the Eye of Terror.





	1. Nevermore

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the novella 'Weregeld' from the 'Corax' anthology, a two-hundred year gap between their disappearances won't stop me believing they went to the Eye of Terror together.

022.M31  
Deliverance

IN THE DARKNESS, tears fell on the pale hands of a demigod as they crumpled his latest attempt to set his thoughts into words. The ball of parchment landed in the concavity of a discarded pauldron, one of many that nestled within. Still more lay on and around the other scattered plates of the _Sable Armour_ that littered the chamber at the pinnacle of the Black Tower. _The Ravenspire_ , Corax reminded himself. It didn’t feel like the Ravenspire anymore.  
  Haunted eyes looked out into the void, reflections of distant stars twinkling in the equally absolute blackness of his teary eyes. Above, the daylit orb of Kiavahr dominated the night of its moon. Shrouded in blood-red clouds, it was a constant reminder of the millions who had died in the uprising. _The millions I killed_.  
  The crack of splintering metal brought Corax back to the present, looking down to find his fists in the cratered ruin of a control panel. Most of the controls in the chamber were inactive, the remains of systems made obsolete when the tower was refitted as a fortress-monastery for the XIXth Legion Astartes. For the best part of a century, it had served as an observatory for the Ravenlord, where he could look out on the transformation of Deliverance since its days as a gaol-moon. This time, though, he had come because it was the chamber farthest from his sins.  
  Corax slammed his fist into the control panel again, drawing a trickle of blood where it caught on a jagged splinter. Tears and blood flowed together, filling the room with the smell of salt and iron. The primarch’s genhanced blood clotted almost instantly, yet somehow it had covered his hands and-  
  Corax blinked.  
  His hands were clean again. _No, never that_. Clean of real blood, but for the single trickle already crusted to brown, if not metaphorically. The red shadow, the darkness at the edge of his vision, took a creeping step forwards.

The commanders of the XIXth legion were gathered in the chamber below. A long time ago it had been the guard officers’ mess, though none of the trappings of those times remained. The room was sparse, now, lit only by starlight and the dim orb of Kiavahr. As much a memorial to the Lycaeus uprising as it was a place of meeting, the walls were engraved with the names of every man, woman, and child that had fought for deliverance. Corax had carved each one himself.  
  “Welcome home, Chapter Masters,” began Aloni Tev, Shade Lord of the Raven Guard. The last time they had all gathered here, the assembled space marines had all worn armour in the same black livery as his own, and all held the ad-hoc rank of commander. Now, each was the master of their own chapter, with their own colours. Corax had also been there, and he could see a sense of loss that mirrored his own writ plainly on the pale features of the others as they noted the primarch’s absence. Gherith Arendi was the one to put it into words.  
  “Where is the Ravenlord?” asked the Shadow Warden of the Black Guard, voice heavy with concern. He still wore the title that had once belonged to Corax’s honour guard, but much of his armour was now white, a red sun pierced by lightning replacing the raven on his shoulder.  
  “After you left, he went to the Red Level,” Tev paused, letting his meaning sink in. The green-armoured master of the Raptors, Branne Nev, opened his mouth as if to speak, but remained silent. During the Heresy War, the units of Raptors he commanded had included the mutants resulting from corrupted gene-seed. All of the assembled masters had fought alongside the ‘roughs’, seen them prove their worth in spite of their monstrous appearance. Branne, though, had known them best of all. They had been locked away on the Red Level after the war. He didn’t need to ask what became of them. He couldn’t bear to. _Nobody survives the Red Level_. “After that, he locked himself in his chambers.”  
  “There has been no word since?” asked Soukhounou, Co-Commander of the Hawk Lords. His purple armour stood out among the others, as did his decision to co-found a chapter by uniting his aerial units with the pilots of the Ultramarines’ 21st Chapter - both known as the ‘Hawks’. He had not been born on Deliverance, but it was a spiritual home of sorts. His connection to their shared father went just as deep.  
  Tev shook his head. “Silence.”  
  “Why are we only hearing this now?” Agapito Nev demanded. In the short time since the Second Founding edict, his Revilers had earned a reputation for their fierce temperament. It was no surprise, for each of the grey-armoured warriors that wore the skull and lightning bolt had been survivors of the dropsite massacre.  
  “Peace, brother,” counselled Branne, placing a hand on Agapito’s shoulder. The two of them, brothers before they were battle-brothers, had sat in this room the day Corax had led the uprising to victory, and dropped atomic charges on Kiavahr to secure it. Having survived Horus’ rebellion only to lose their father was now added to those bittersweet memories.  
  “It’s been a _year_ , Branne,” Agapito snarled, batting his brother’s hand away. Time had done little to dim the fire in his heart, if anything it had grown brighter removed from the influence of calmer heads.  
  “To the day,” Tev remarked. He had thought, at first, that the primarch would re-emerge after a few hours, perhaps days. As the days has become weeks, he had wondered whether to tell the others. The weeks stretched into months, until finally Tev could not ignore the fact that this was a matter that affected not only the Raven Guard, but all their successors.  
  “He is not coming back,” came the soft whisper from the shadows.  
  The tension in the room thickened instantly. The gathered chapter masters had been content to ignore the hulking figure in terminator armour while he remained silent at the edge of the gathering, but now the Forgotten One stepped forward. Soukhounou, the other Terran in the room, was the only one who turned to regard the Lord Reaper of the Carcharodon Astra. Unlike the others, the colour of his armour was not new. It was the storm-cloud grey the legion had worn before the rediscovery of their primarch, marked with patterns that recalled tribal tattoos of the Xeric warriors from whom the earliest recruits were drawn. This warrior had never worn the livery of the Raven Guard, the only difference after centuries of war the coiled carcharodon that replaced the legion numeral on one shoulder. The Forgotten One was little more than a dark myth to all but the oldest veterans - even the Heresy War had not made the primarch willing to recall the brutal warlord from the outer darkness.  
  “You did,” countered Soukhounou. He spoke it as an accusation. Unlike the heraldry worn by the others, the exile’s had been granted not by Corax, but by the High Lords of Terra. The primarch had refused even to meet with the former Legion Master. The Lord Reaper had not volunteered the terms of the Edict of Exile that granted him permission to found a new chapter, and none of the others had asked.  
  The Forgotten One smiled, a fierce, shark-toothed grin. “Not for long, cousin. We will return to the outer darkness and he, he will go somewhere just as far.”  
  “You speak as if you even know our father,” Agapito snapped, rounding on the exile. His hands were curled into fists.  
  “You are right; I do not know your father.” The other commanders shared a look, acutely aware the Forgotten One had now denied kinship with both them and the primarch. The truth, if they had asked for it, was that the High Lords had decided Corax should never be formally associated with the Carcharodon Astra if he was unwilling to give his blessing. Especially given the question marks that remained over some elements of the nomad-predation fleet. “Yet I understand what he is doing well enough. It is exile, as sure as when he sent me out into the black. The division of the legion is meaningless if he remains.”  
  “Long Shadow,” Branne whispered, realisation dawning.  
  “Brother?” Agapito asked, turning his back on the exile once more.  
  “He thinks he’s become a Long Shadow – that he can’t be trusted. Not since the Raptors.”  
  Agapito scowled. Arendi nodded in reluctant agreement.  
  “He named me Legion Master on Yarant, when he was planning to die there.”  
  “Aye. We thought he changed his mind, but,” Branne paused, shaking his head. “He was only delaying. Until the war was over.”

Corax moved silently through the upper corridors of the Ravenspire. He was not trying to avoid detection – he could have entered a shadow-walk to become near-invisible if he had wanted that – stealth simply came naturally to him. Not a soul crossed his path, but that was no surprise. The vast fortress-monastery had been so very empty these last years.  
  Newly reactivated sensors above an eagle-marked gate detected the primarch’s coming, cold motors grinding in protest as they pulled armoured doors apart for the first time in over a decade. On the other side was a cavernous space, though modest by the standards of a hangar. Where once the private armoured transports of garrison officers might have stood in ranks, now a single vessel dominated the space. It was bizarre in appearance, the angles of each hull panel precisely calculated to baffle every sensor known to man – and many more besides. A cameleoline layer even allowed it to baffle vision, though it currently remained in its default, matte-black colouration. In that respect it was a rarity to be able to see it at all.  
  Corax wove through the servitors making the last of the preparations to the stealth ship, making his way to the cockpit. Although the ship was larger than a stormbird, it could carry only one passenger. Settling into the pilot’s seat, custom built to his frame, Corax activated the ship’s systems.  
  A grimace crossed his features as he spotted the ship’s name, _Alia Aenor_ , inscribed across the curiously analogue control bank. When he had asked what it meant, Alpharius had smiled cryptically, his only reply _‘What indeed.’_ If it was a mystery Corax had never felt compelled to dwell on in better times, it was one he sought to put from his mind forever now. Alpharius died in Ultramar, some of the reports had said. Let the mystery die with him.  
  Seeing the last of the servitors retreat to the edge of the hangar, Corax activated the engines. He had flown the ship only a handful of times, finding little practical use for a personal warp-cutter to travel between systems, and each time he had half-expected the engines to roar into life. Instead, archaeotech thrusters thrummed softly, tilting the _Aenor_ slightly as it lifted from the deck before levelling off. A flick of a switch and the volume increased tenfold in the cockpit. Out in the hangar, however, the ship disappeared from sight and sound as the reflex shields were raised. They had been Corax’s own addition, despite his brother’s protests that they were unnecessary.  
  Pushing the thrust lever to maximum, the _Aenor_ ghosted out of the hangar and left Deliverance far below.  
  Corax’s fingers strayed almost subconsciously over the controls, keying in the priority address frequency. The status light glowed a soft green, and he paused. What could he tell his sons? How could he ever explain what he had not dared voice even to his own brothers?

There was confusion as the transmission stretched into seconds of silence. Then the hammer-blow of shock as the sons of Corax recognised the voice of their primarch whisper a single word.  
  “Nevermore.”


	2. For the Wolftime

211.M31  
Fenris

IN THE SPACE of a moment, the world had been turned upside down. Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed by his kith and kin, was the fulcrum about which it twisted and bent. Unmoving, yet lost. There were two thousand others in the warrior-hall of the Valgard. Did they not sense the nauseating wrongness as he did? Perhaps they were no longer there after all. Perhaps he was alone. Bjorn could not tell. Two words filled all of his being.  
  _Not you_.

The primarch ascended through the upper levels of the Valgard, heading inexorably toward the docking platforms at the pinnacle of the Aett. Behind him came the Einherjar, two-score of the greatest warriors of the Rout. A shadow of their former numbers, perhaps, but every one of them was a veteran of the Heresy War.  
  Though there was a dark mood upon many of them, others laughed and boasted as though this were any other hunt. All knew that it was not. At their head, Grimnir Blackblood walked in silence at the primarch’s side, his features grim and his grip tight about the great maul _Malanan_. His one eye looked sidelong at his lord, and wondered.  
  As Huscarl of the Einherjar, Grimnir had been closest to the primarch when he had entered his fugue. He had watched the primarch’s lips, and recognised the names upon them. _Curze_. _Angron_. Curze was long dead, but Angron? Russ had a score to settle there. Grimnir remembered their last battle, and his brow furrowed. It may have been a lesson, but the Wolf King had not _let_ Angron defeat him – never that. _Neither will stand_ , Russ had said. Lesson, or prophecy?  
  A giant hand slapped Grimnir’s shoulder, pulling him in close. Grimnir flinched at the touch of his primarch, and at the chill of the armour _Elavagar_.  
  “What’s on your mind, one-eye?”  
  “You had the look of a man experiencing a vision.” He didn’t ask what it was – such things were better left to the gothi – but perhaps Russ might reveal something of what it meant.  
  “Aye, it is so.” Russ chuckled, shaking his head. “All that time spent reading the runes to no avail, and a damned _vision_ comes upon me when I’m just trying to have a drink. The wyrd is a real bastard sometimes.”  
  Had the wyrd finally answered the Wolf King’s question, then? “Where are we going, Jarl?”  
  Russ hesitated. “To find my brother.”  
  “Which one?”  
  There was a distant look in the primarch’s eye as he looked ahead, as if checking to see if a landmark he expected to lay on his path had come into sight. “I don’t know.”  
  Grimnir scowled. If a primarch needed to be found, there was only one place for the hunt to begin. It brought the cryptic last words of Kva Who-Is-Divided to Grimnir’s mind, the old gothi beckoning him close, dark eyes like drops of blood frozen in amber wide with revelation. _The Eye is in the Well, and the Well is in the Eye._

The Fell-Handed stood alone, seemingly rooted in place on the edge of the dais where the great table stood. Bjorn was called many things – the Fell-Handed, the Bear, Daemonslayer, Wyrd-Marked, Youngest, Jarl of Onn, Shield-Bearer – but of all of them _Einherjar_ seemed a bitter irony for the last of Russ’ guard. It was usually rendered _blood sworn_ in Low Gothic, but _lone warrior_ was just as accurate. The rest of the Rout let him be, treating his manner as if it were merely his usual brooding. Could they truly be so blind? Wild speculation as to the fearsome beasts the primarch would slay and the mighty trophies with which he would return from his hunt echoed in the hall of carven stone. They drank and ate, boasted and brawled as though nothing had changed. Perhaps they did not yet comprehend that it had.  
  “Who pissed in your mjod, Winterclaw?”  
  The bass rumble at his shoulder intruded on Thrain Winterclaw’s thoughts. He turned to see Haldor Twinfeng grinning at him from behind his greying beard. The jarl of Tra – once Bjorn’s own Great Company – wore a gilt-edged suit of power armour in the blue-grey that was slowly replacing the old legion colours, heraldry of the sabretooth snarling on his shoulder. His namesake, a pair of curved fangs each as long and sharp as seax blades, hung from his gorget alongside those of a dozen xeno-beasts slain in the centuries since.  
  “Hjà, Jarl,” Thrain replied half-heartedly. He had no retort to offer.  
  “Skitja, your mood is black!” Haldor pressed on, throwing an arm around Thrain as if it would impart a measure of his levity. With his other hand he rapped his knuckles against the newly blackened ceramite of Thrain’s breastplate. “Have you taken the priesthood’s colours not just on your armour, but to heart?”  
  “I’m not the only one.” Thrain gestured to Bjorn.  
  “And what of it? Bjorn’s been a miserable bastard for years, no reason you should join him.”  
  Thrain hesitated, wondering if he should continue. The first jarl only to have known the chapter, never the legion, Twinfeng shared perhaps the closest bond with the primarch outside the Einherjar.  
  “It’s not like you to keep a leash on your tongue.”  
  “What becomes of us now? We are not like the other chapters. It was only the will of Russ that kept us together. Yet we cannot fracture, the Wolf Brothers taught us that.”  
  “You speak as if the Wolf King died.” There was an edge of threat creeping into the Jarl’s voice now.  
  “How many of the others returned?” Thrain snapped. One by one, the primarchs had fallen or disappeared. With Russ’ departure, only Dorn would remain – the Emperor’s Praetorian to the last. “For all we are likely to see of him he is as alive as Guilliman.”  
  “Guilliman? Do not speak to me of Guilliman,” Haldor spat, corrosive saliva hissing as it ate into the flagstones. He had been at Thessala the day Roboute Guilliman had been laid low. He had been the one who brought home the saga of the primarch in his living tomb. He shuddered at the indignity, and the memory of the Wolf King’s fury. Russ had raged for days – threatening to march into the Temple of Correction and tear his brother’s stasis-coffin down. “Propped up like a trophy on Macragge.” It was no way for a warrior to end.  
  “Because they could not let him go.”  
  Haldor bared his fangs with a growl that warned he had at last been pushed too far. “The Wolf King will return.” He spoke with conviction beyond faith. He didn’t just believe it, he would defy reality itself to make it true if he had to. After all the madness the galaxy had seen, it might even work.  
  “I recognise my failing, and will be sure to correct it,” Thrain muttered, though his thoughts remained defiant. The Rout would not be held together by an empty throne and an absent king.

The Lord of Winter and War seemed to bend the very elements around him. The fur of his great wolf pelt stirred in disrupted air currents, bristling with impatience just as she had in life. Carven bone totems and ingots of raw metal rattled against the plates of _Elavagar_ , cacophonous in the stillness at the top of the world. Beneath his feet, hoarfrost covered the exposed mountain peak.  
  For the most part the mountain concealed the vast bastion that lay beneath the surface, but the upper kilometres of the Valgard were marred by spires and docking piers enough for several star forts. Atop the highest of the sky-bridges that wove between the mountain and its towers, the Einherjar grew restless as the minutes passed and Russ remained unmoving as the mountain beneath his feet. A stormbird idled on the landing platform at the other end, the sound of the engines swallowed by the thinness of an atmosphere that tested the limits of the space marines’ genhanced physiology. None reached for their helms. They were the Wolf King’s own honour guard, and they would not show weakness in the presence of their liege while he stood alone and unhelmed at the very pinnacle of Fenris.  
  From his vantage point, Russ looked out over the jagged peaks of the volda hamarrki that rose from the storm clouds of Asaheim like the scattered islands of the worldsea. None came close to rivalling the Fang, but even the Father of Mountains did not quite live up to the legend that the World Spine pierced the void itself. Not by the Imperial reckoning, at least. The Imperium took things too literally, as ever, but Fenrisians understood the paradox. The mountains were the pillars that held up the sky-dome, and that limit defined the boundary between Fenris and ginnungagap, the space between stars.  
  _The stars are bright_ , he thought. _They are calling you_.  
  Russ put the thought from his mind, for it was not his own, even as he paid no heed to the figure who was, and was not, standing beside him. The crippled king in battle-scarred bronze equalled his stature, even hunched against a broken spine, empty hands forever twitching, grasping for the bladed staff that had fallen from them centuries ago and light years away. Russ learned long ago to ignore the spectre that had haunted him since their duel on Prospero. It was easier to face the monster that his brother had become than to look into the blood-filled eye of Magnus as he had been on that day. That it had begun stepping into the waking world did not change that.  
  The wheel of life and death had turned again. The last links to the old age, when he had walked the ice with the first Einherjar, were gone, and even the age that followed – that he had once believed would last forever – was a fading memory. The Allfather no longer had need of an executioner.  
  _Still you linger_.  
  “Does he wait for some sign?”  
  “Perhaps he is having another vision.”  
  Russ made no move, ignoring the unrest of his Einherjar and the silent whispers of the brother he murdered. He would move when the thread of the wyrd pulled him, and not before. He closed his eyes, frigid air threatening to freeze his nose, throat, and lungs as he pulled in a slow, deep breath.  
  The death world had shaped him, and he had recast the Sixth Legion in his own image. It had been so natural, for all the primarchs, he had never stopped to consider whether it was wise. Now the wars they were made for were over. Where other legions had adapted to the new way, Fenris would not let the Rout change. Her ice was in their veins, her claws lodged deep in their hearts. Their fates were intertwined now. Perhaps they always had been.  
  But his was not.  
  An impossible distance away, a raven cawed. The smell of blood and brimstone filled Russ’ nostrils. His ears pricked up at the sound of the second, strangled cry. The third was a rasping death rattle. Eyes snapped open, focused with a predatory intent.  
  The Wolf King threw back his head, and howled.

Infinities away, within turning wheels of thought and memory, the single eye of Magnus the Red was fixed on the world of ice. If his daemonic form had possessed a face, it would have been smiling.


End file.
